Bad beat at the 'Shoe!

It finally happened!  After 1610 hours of play, I was finally involved in a bad beat jackpot in live poker!  I’ve never seen a bad beat happen in a brick and mortar casino, and in the millions of hands I’ve played online, I’ve only seen it happen once.  Now, though, I can claim I’ve seen not one straight flush (a rarity in and of itself), but two straight flushes in the same hand; one higher than the other.

I got the chance to play last Friday night.  The wife and I were not going out, as it was my son’s birthday and he wanted to have a sleepover.  After a nice Friday dinner at home, clearing the table of dirty dishes, and getting the kids settled in with a movie I found my way out to garage and was soon traveling along the I-95 corridor headed north to Baltimore’s Horseshoe.  After an uneventful trip, I was seated immediately.

The first hour or two were fairly standard – I was coolered / outplayed in two particular hands:

• I called a PFR with T9dd, raised the flop $15 cbet to $45 on a J 9 6 dd board and got shoved on for $90 total by 96hh.  Didn’t get there on any of my 1000 outs…  Okay – 16+ outs (counting the backdoor straight), but still – I run good! 
•  Then, I called a $12 PFR with JTo in the BB along with 6 other players, called a $25 weak cbet on a J 5 7 cc board along with 5 other players and open shipped a turned top two but was called by a (IMO terribly played) bottom set of 5’s for around $120.

Down a buy-in from the aforementioned hands and a few miscellaneous speculative calls, I rebought to a full $300 and sat patiently, waiting for the hands that would never happen…

Mid-way through the session, a 20-something sits down to my left, clearly having a good time during what turns out to be his friend’s bachelor party.  2 hands into his session, he decides to open limp what turns out to be 34ss.  I must have checked my crappy, unmemorable 2 cards in the BB, but the flop comes 5s6s7d.  The action went bet, raise, re-raise, all in for $96 from the BTN.  After a hesitation, my partying friend finally called for the remaining $16 from his re-raise.  I figured the button for the flopped straight, but didn’t figure the kid for the dumb end of it.  Well, they flip their cards, and I realize what bad shape my friend is – not only is he crushed by the better straight, but his opponent has him covered for all but 1 card in his flush outs – he needs to hit a 2s to win the hand.

The dealer doesn’t wait – he immediately throws out the 7s to make both hands straight flush.  I instantly realized – a genuine bad beat!  Booyah!

Unfortunately for the two guys (and the rest of the table), the ‘Shoe does bad beats a bit differently, where they pay $200 for Jacks full beaten (I was on the receiving end of that once, see here http://lowstakeshands.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-good-beat-bad-beat-little-zeebo.html), $400 for Queens full (ironically, a player at the table behind me hit that moments before we hit ours), Kings full through Aces full of Tens for $750, Aces full of Jacks+ for $2500, and quads beaten gets $10k divided among the following: $500 to each player, 70% remaining to the loser and 30% remaining to the winner.  So, I got paid the table share, $500, and the loser / winner got $4200 & $1800 respectively.  Anywhere else, we all would have received $10k+, and the winner / loser would have gotten quite a bit more…  Oh well.  Good times at the ‘Shoe!